You can work backwards towards first principles. In my case, whenever I learn something new, I always stop to boil things down to the essentials. What does this new tool / framework actually do, what am I hoping to accomplish.

Then I try to work it as best I can into my current toolset. For me, all projects get a repo on Github, and I get the nasty infrastructure bits implemented first, like deployment workflow, before actually working on the problem.

There's an art and craft to learning new things that I find fulfilling all on its own without having to turn it into something lofty.